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Indian budget in the eye of a fiscal storm

Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s third Budget signals the mid-point of this government’s tenure till 2019. At the best of times, the honeymoon period would have ended by now.

Photo credit: in.news.yahoo.com

But it is unfortunate that the FM has to face a perfect storm of snowballing, fiscal liabilities in public sector banks; drought induced low agricultural productivity; international economic head winds; the additional cost of securing India in an increasingly insecure world and the consequences of populism- primarily the wholly unnecessary increase of 23 percent in government pay and pensions and the outcome of delayed reforms in subsidy.

Running out of fiscal resources

In comparison, the government’s budget kitty is woefully inadequate even without meeting the long standing demand for spending more on health and education; developing infrastructure; boosting rural incomes; extending the patchy system of social protection and enhancing long neglected defence preparedness.

Photo credit: Dreamstime.com

Consider that the total annual capital budget of the Union government last year was just Rs 2.4 lakh crore (just 1.7 percent of GDP). State Governments spend a similar amount. But public investment at just 3.4 percent of GDP does not compare well with the thumb rule for developing countries of at least 8 percent of GDP especially when you are also running a fiscal deficit of 4 percent also in the Union budget alone.

The mess in government banks

More worryingly, even this meagre public investment may not actually be possible if the fiscal mess emanating from public sector banks is to managed. Loans worth Rs 3.5 lakh crore in government owned banks are acknowledged as non performing (the borrowers have defaulted on repayments). Some provisioning for writing off these loans has been done but not enough.

The real risk is that a whopping Rs 2.7 lakh crore of loans have been dressed up by “restructuring” them. In essence rolling over non-performing loans (NPA) so that they exit the NPA classification. But whether the favoured borrowers can support future repayments is unclear. The RBI has come down heavily on such practices and directed banks to start provisioning against all stressed assets. Hence the spate of losses recorded in the quarter ending December 2015 by government owned banks.

Another worry is that government banks will need an additional Rs 1.8 lakh crore of equity infusion to comply with the Basel III capital adequacy norms. This takes the total capital requirement of government banks to Rs 6 lakh crores- just under 4.5 percent of GDP.

Even if the entire capital budget of the government is diverted for re-capitalizing government banks — it will still take two to three years before they get a healthy balance sheet. And what is there to stop the cycle of irresponsible lending from being repeated? After all, these non-performing assets were built up over the past several years. But none of the top honchos of these banks — present or past — have been called to account for this colossal deception.

Poor credibility of corporate governance in government banks

Jugaad trumps systems; Photo credit: Alamy.com

Today, government bank equity is deeply discounted. The credibility of corporate governance in government banks has been dented. Worse still, there is no clear path for restoring stability. The direction preferred by the government is to retain the governance architecture of government owned banks with notional changes to enhance bank autonomy. Privatization of select government banks – a sure mood lifter for domestic and international investor community- has never been a preferred policy option.

Government ownership has benefits. For one, it notionally reassures depositors that their money is safe. Possibly this is why there is no run on deposits in government banks, unlike what was seen in Greece recently. Depositors and bond holders view government banks through the filter of sovereign credit. It helps that India has an impeccable record on meeting all its financial commitments.

But one trigger, which could escalate the financial risk sharply could be if oil prices start firming up subsequent to the production freezing agreements between Saudi Arabia, Russia and other top oil producers. This will stoke inflation in India; keep domestic interest rates high, thereby impacting investment and worsen the current account deficit. Add to this that sharply reduced public investment- a consequence of possible diversion of capital to clean the balance sheets of government banks, will also impact growth, jobs and incomes.

The poisoned chalice of trade offs

Government has a poisoned chalice it needs to sip from. If it brushes deep, bank restructuring under the carpet, it can postpone the day of reckoning- but only at significant medium term economic cost. A broken government banking system, which caters to 70 percent of banking needs, cannot sustain rapid private sector growth.

One option for maintaining fiscal stability, is for the government to access multilateral support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for restructuring government banks. IMF support reassures investors because it comes with a programme of structural and governance reform, including broad basing the share-holding of banks to non-government investors; professionalizing their boards and embedding oversight mechanisms to insulate them from succumbing to politically motivated loan melas or dodgy, private projects.

Government should shed the muscular stance

The down side is that going cap-in-hand to the IMF does not fit the muscular India story, which is the leitmotif of the BJP government. The BJP will worry that it will have negative political consequences in the forthcoming state elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and next year in Uttar Pradesh (UP). This is true. But none of these states offer credible political gains for the BJP in any case, except UP. The muscular approach can be abandoned without much grief. Its marginal utility is diminishing and reduced dividends are already visible.

One hopes that the government’s brand managers are reading the tea leaves correctly. This is not the time for soaring rhetoric or proclaiming achievements loudly. Far better to adopt a humble posture, point to the depressing state of the world and outline an agenda for dealing with adverse circumstances.

The FM can be charming if he tries. Photo credit: freepressjournal.in

Three big steps out of the fiscal mess

First Mr. Jaitley must guard against 2016 becoming India’s 2008 “Lehman Brothers” moment. Lehman Brothers was a global financial services firm that filed for bankruptcy protection. This sparked off a domino effect which exposed deep financial irregularities across the banking sector. It also triggered the Occupy Wall Street movement. Ordinary citizens, disgusted by the extent of malfeasance in the financial world, took New York by storm and shut down the financial district. At the best of times, Indians are suspicious of big business and are quick to come out on the streets in protest. This is not the time to risk an “Occupy Dalal Street movement”.

Government must regain credibility by coming out strongly against all those who have connived to build up this huge quantum of non- performing loans — bank managers who were in decision-making roles, large corporate borrowers and those within the political establishment who may have turned a blind eye to such maladministration. Mr. Jaitley must also share publicly how deep is the rot and what steps the government proposes to manage the fall out.

Second, government should take this opportunity and opt for only a “holding budget” for 2016-17 — an accounting exercise to rationalize and consolidate past initiatives. The bottom line is to insulate income support for the poor and allocations for agricultural production from the fiscal mayhem. Health, drinking water and sanitation and education allocations should be held at 2014-15 levels relative to projected GDP.

Finally, the government must increase gross tax collection over the next two years from the low of 10 percent in 2014-15 to 12 percent of GDP- last achieved in 2007-08. The GDP growth projections of 7.5 percent lack credibility when triangulated with the ground realities. Lower growth will impact tax revenues negatively. Services tax is a progressive tax, which primarily affects the well off. Raising the rate by 2 percentage points could generate an additional Rs 30,000 crore. Taxing capital gains from the sale of equity and the receipt of dividend beyond a threshold level, is another option for reducing income inequality and plugging a big hole in the tax net.

Government already spends more than it earns on revenue expenditure. We still run a revenue deficit of nearly 3 percent of GDP, which we fund by taking loans. Hence, the increasing burden of interest payment. Trade-offs will have to be made if the unwise commitment – amounting to Rs 100,000 crore – on the 7th Pay Commission recommendation is implemented.

So are we in the eye of the storm? And could we be on the cusp of a potential financial emergency? We should act before a flash point triggers this eventuality. A modest budget for 2016-17, enhancing tax collection by selectively increasing the effective tax rates and sharply focused allocations for value enhancing public expenditure, is the only way out of this mess.

Published by Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Sanjeev S. Ahluwalia is currently Advisor, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and an independent consultant with core skills in economic regulation, institutional development, decentralization, public sector performance management and governance. He is an Honorary Member of the TERI Advisory Board and a Honorary Member of the CIRC Management Committee. He was a Senior Specialist with the Africa Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network of the World Bank for over seven years, 2005-2013. He has over a decade of experience at the national level in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India as Joint Secretary, Disinvestment from 2002 to 2005 and earlier in the Department of Economic Affairs in commercial debt management and Asian Development Bank financed projects and trade development with East Asia in the Ministry of Commerce. He was also the first Secretary of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission from 1999 to 2000. He worked in TERI as a Senior Fellow from 1995 to 1998 in the areas of governance and regulation of the electricity sector and institutional development for renewable energy growth. Previously he served the Government of Uttar Pradesh, India in various capacities at the District and State level from 1980 onwards as a member of the Indian Administrative Service. His last job was as Secretary Finance (Expenditure management) Government of UP from 2001 to 2002. He has a Masters in Economic Policy Management from Columbia University, New York; a post graduate Diploma in Financial Management from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University and a Masters in History from St. Stephens College, Delhi.
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